Monday, 30 December 2013

The Russian newspaper Kommersant tells us how Lukoil is trying to sell its shares in the oil field of Junin. Lukoi is talking to the French Total, the Norwegian Statoil, the Korean KNOC, the Indian ONGC, the US American Chevron, the Russian Zarubezhneft and Bashneft and to the Chinese Sinopec and CNOOC.

Talking about Chávez having nationalised oil exploitation: officialdom told useful idiots abroad Chávez had nationalised the oil industry, which he definitely did NOT. What he did was to cancel the agreements the Venezuelan state had signed when oil prices were at the bottom. These agreements had been necessary so that Venezuela could have even some basic research going on. Chávez did that only after oil prices rose high enough for him to get financial respite. In the last few years oil prices kept increasing but even they are not enough to keep up with the research and maintenance costs of the oil industry, so the government has had to open up again and has done so getting into deals that are probably worse than anything the maligned Carlos Andrés Pérez did. In that context, the Chávez government has introduced a series of oil projects whereby foreign companies can get up to 40% of shares. In the case of Junin, 60% of that 40% went to Rosneft, led by notorious Igor Sechin, and 20% went to Lukoil and Gazprom Neft each.

Lukoil has had problems negotiating with Gazprom and also with Rosneft, so it is trying to leave. According to the consortium laws, the companies have to decide by the end of this month - i.e. by tomorrow, what is going to happen with the shares. Sechin didn't want to give the money Lukoi expected for its 20%. Some say the Chinese are going to be the ones carrying out the deal and that Rosneft and Gazprom would agree to that.

Venezuelan companies investing in Venezuela? Not with the "revolution".

Are the Chinese going to get yet more of our oil fields, from the Russian, that is?

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

Here you can see a very selective network of nepotism in Venezuela's government. The vertices in green represent those agents who were military coup mongers. I only put there the deceased Chávez because he was the leader of them all.

The vertices in pink are those persons who are working now in a high level position in government because they are the mothers or wives of someone else in the network. You can see the relationship of others by checking the different edge labels.

This is just work in progress. There are many more to be added and I will probably have to use another representation tool to show them all. Maduro and his wife have been particularly eager to reduce unemployment or badly paid jobs among their relatives.

Minister of "Justice" on socialism, his tie and his shoesHere an English article explaining the whole thing for those who do not speak Spanish. I wonder if Italian communist ministers also wear that kind of clothes.